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Store owner pummels gun-toting thug

Surveillance video captures violent confrontation in Chicago

For the two hoodie-wearing robbers, it may have been just another day at the office.

But behind the counter of the Chicago gift shop they planned to rob was an owner who had been robbed before and had enough.

In a dramatic stand against the gun violence that has plagued the city, Luis Quizhpe and his brother-in-law, Luis Ernesto Aucaquizhpe, stood their ground in the face of a barrage of gunfire and chased the robbers out of their store.

Quizhpe, 62, was shot in the leg as he grabbed a baseball bat from behind the counter and used it to beat back the armed pair before his brother-in-law chased them from the store with a fire extinguisher.

“I thought (the gun) was a toy, but what made me frightened and really made me angry was when they grabbed my brother-in-law by the neck and they were pointing the gun at him,” Quizhpe told the Chicago Tribune.

At least 10 shots were fired during the robbery, which was captured on surveillance video. In the chaos, the trigger-happy gunman shot his fellow robber.

“It was like the Fourth of July. Pow, pow, pow,” Quizhpe told the newspaper. “Then (one of the robbers) was yelling, ‘Kill the (expletive).'”

Miraculously, Quizhpe suffered only a single bullet wound to the leg, despite being shot at several times.

“God didn’t permit me to go yet,” he said. “There must be a reason, for all the shots that he fired.”

One of the suspects was arrested at a Chicago-area hospital after showing up there for treatment, police said.

Cornell Mack, 53, has been charged with attempted first-degree murder, armed robbery and discharge of a firearm, reports the newspaper.